HELLO REDDIT :D

I understand your concern, but let's actually think of the thinking process of the moderators.

Sees shaded photos: "Wow this is a good build! Look at the detail and the colours!"

Scrolls further: "Wow this is a great build, but we must judge the ones without the shaders, i bet they look as good!"

Sees actual photos: "Okay this is not as good as I expected but it's not bad."

How on earth is it unconsciously beneficial to include shaded pictures in hopes of increasing appeal towards the build itself when it's doing the total opposite of what you meant to do?



You mentioned about how a perfect Big Mac ad could influence your eagerness to purchasing a hamburger from McDonald's. This isn't the same here. As a consumer we judge whether or not we like something by looking at the ads before actually purchasing. But as an evaluator the moderators are here to review the "Big Mac" instead of the ad. So although their hopes have been brought up, it has been brought down nonetheless.



What you speak of is called the first impression bias in Psychology. It describes the bias when one person first encounters another object and forms a mental image of that object. The first impressions individuals give to others could greatly influence how they are treated and viewed in many contexts of everyday life. Usually an impression would stay stable forever, as proven by various studies, but in this competition, participants are required to submit photos which are purely vanilla. These photos would then form a new first impression which is for the shaderless build. As they are judges, their values for the shaderless builds should be more significant than that for which with shaders, therefore the new first impression will replace the prior one.



Let's use your Big Mac example again.

So I'm a consumer who has never tried McDonald's and I'm here ordering food from McDonald's. I heard my friends loved Big Macs so I took a look at the ad for a Big Mac set. The picture looks so perfect I bought it right away. But then I realise the burger I bought was not constructed well, the sauce was not as perfect as I had imagined it to be, and the patty tastes nothing like a perfect beef patty.

Let's think of an experiment. If I had asked you from a scale from 1 to 10 how perfect do you think a Big Mac is before and after purchasing the burger, it is a must that results taken before purchasing the burger would be significantly higher than the latter. Now there are more variables to consider but to put it simply, the first impression does not influence perception when the truth is revealed, and then logic takes over. The judging process in this competition starts after "purchasing the burger", therefore the first impression made due to the "advertisement" is lost. Though the first impression remains the same since it is the first impression, the effect of which on perception has been significantly lowered, to the point where it is negligible.



This is an unnecessarily elaborated answer to a big controversy in this competition and I hope I have proven that shaders have no effect on the final result.

Do not speculate without proof. Here's the proof, there you go.